


Shitty Song Lyrics Here

by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, YAGKYAS, YAGKYAS 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:44:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/Perpetual%20Motion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brad is on shore leave. Ray is in a band. There are nachos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shitty Song Lyrics Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [schlicky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/schlicky/gifts).



> Written for YAGKYAS 2011.

There’s a glorious shit-hole Mexican place Brad always drops in on when he’s on shore leave in San Diego. It’s maybe 500 square feet total, with a cramped counter and a dozen little tables. He happened upon it by accident years ago, wandering into the gay district without realizing it after a late night drinking on the town and suddenly encountering an intense craving for actual cheese--as much as he loved his jalapeno. When he stumbled in--wearing his uniform--no one had batted an eye. The food’s great, absolute shit no matter if it’s fresh or reheated two days later. The crowd is pretty amusing too.

It takes three days of shore leave to make it over there, and it’s later than he usually shows up. The tiny patio out front is overflowing with women in low-cut shirts and men with sharp cheekbones and extra-tight pants. A few of both give Brad long, appreciative looks, and he responds with the same where appropriate. The line at the counter is more of a crowd, and it takes Brad ten minutes to realize that the shitty music he’s hearing isn’t from the staticky speaker system he’s used to but from an actual band. He shifts in the crowd at the counter and looks into the main dining area. There’s a three-man band on the smallest, creakiest makeshift stage Brad has ever seen. It’s a drummer, a bassist, and a singer on guitar. When they finish the song, the singer lifts his head, and the lights hit him, and for a second, Brad thinks he’s lost his mind.

It’s Ray.

It’s fucking Ray.

Someone jostles him, and Brad almost pushes back before he remembers where he is and what he’s doing. He’s in civvies, just a guy in his favorite shit-hole Mexican dive. And the guy on stage is just...is just...

It’s fucking Ray.

“Order?” The man behind the counter asks as Brad is moved to the front of the crowd through momentum.

“Nachos,” Brad says on autopilot, watching Ray--and it is absolutely, definitely Ray--tune his guitar for the next shitty song he’ll play. “And a Corona.”

The man behind the counter rings it up, hands Brad his beer, and gives him a playing card in a picture frame to put on the edge of a table. He doesn’t think he’ll find a table in the crowd, but it seems most of them are standing for the fun of it, and Brad slides into a table at the back of the room as Ray and his band start up a new song.

It is most assuredly Ray.

Brad pops the top of his beer and tries to think of the last time he’d talked to Ray. It’s been...two years? Maybe? Ray had gone to college, gotten a degree in something-the-fuck, and then he’d written Brad in an email that he was going on tour with a band. Is this the same band, Brad wonders, or is this a new one? He wonders when Ray went back to the close-cropped hair he remembers from Iraq, what made Ray decide to take up with another band after graduating top of his class from Vanderbilt with a degree in... Brad realizes he can’t remember. He slams back half his beer to pretend like he doesn’t feel guilty for that. He was the one who stopped writing, stopped taking calls, stopped responding to stupid fucking packages of board wax and cheap, shit whiskey. He stopped responding to all the signs that Ray fucking Person was dick-deep in love with him.

The song finishes, and Ray pants into the mike for a second. Even in the green-tinged fluorescent lighting of the place, Brad can clearly see the sweat beading his collar. He’s dreamt about that sweat a couple of times. Licking it like he’s in some dumb fuck porno.

“That song,” Ray says into the mike, and his twang carries across the room, “is about some stupid shit the drummer thinks is important. I don’t really give a motherfuck because the guitar part is fucking sweet, and it could be about someone fucking their beloved dead dog...”

“You’d know, you whiskey tango fuck,” Brad murmurs and feels himself smile as Ray grins at the room, not seeing him in the shadows at the back.

“...but since he makes us play that piece of shit, I make us play this one,” Ray finishes before counting down and letting loose a long, high note that makes Brad very, very concerned he’s going to come in his pants because it sounds very, very close to the sound Ray makes when he comes. He doesn’t actually hear the song. He’s too busy staring at Ray and the way he moves, the way he strums the guitar; the way his throat stretches as he hits the high notes; the way the half a dozen men at the front of the stage all lose their shit when he looks down at them, eyes wide and focused on each of them individually. He remembers that look, zeroed in on him one very drunk night when Ray had admitted--after his own full case of Bud--that if it was up to him, he’d be fucking Brad through the mattress right that second.

Brad picks over his nachos and signals for another beer as he pushes back the jealousy that he knows isn’t his right anymore. Not since he bedded Ray that one, drunken night, and then left before the sun was up without even a goddamn note.

But it’s fucking Ray-Ray. It’s his RTO. His second-in-command. His...the guy who got tired of waiting for Brad to catch a fucking clue and told him flat-fucking-out what he wanted with no fear, no worry, and no censure when Brad had run in the other direction. The man who had still sent him care packages until Brad had stopped acknowledging any communication whatsoever.

Brad eats his nachos and has two more beers and winces his way through the rest of the set. Ray taking back-up to his annoying fucking bass guitarist on lead vocals. Brad always knew Ray sang like shit on purpose when they were in-country, but the bassist’s voice is actually terrible. When Ray announces they’re going on break, Brad watches the front row of pretty boys swoon in near-fucking-unison as Ray steps off the tiny stage. Brad watches them swarm around him, and he’s on his feet before he thinks, cutting across the floor like he cut across the field the day Rudy lost his hippie-fuck mind for thirty seconds. The swarm of pretty boys doesn’t part, and Brad finds that his glare doesn’t work on the back of their heads.

“...so talented,” one of them says to Ray, and Ray nods like they’re solving world goddamn peace.

“For a cow-tipping rapist,” Brad says.

Ray’s head jerks up. He stares at Brad for a long moment. “Do I rape cows regularly, or do I just rape on the side?” he asks like it hasn’t been two years, like Brad hadn’t run scared, like there’s no reason at all to be surprised Brad’s suddenly shown up in a glorious, divey Mexican restaurant in San Diego.

“You rape cows all the time, you half-brained degenerate.”

The flurry of pretty boy fans are all giving Brad dirty looks. Ray is grinning at him like a goddamn maniac. Brad wants to kiss the shit out of him.

“At least I never had to pay for it like some sad, middle-aged fuck driving a Miata.”

“I never had to pay for it,” Brad says. “I decided to pay for it.”

“You are a classy fuck.”

“You done here?” Brad asks. “There’s better beer down the street.”

Ray looks at him for another long moment. “I like it here,” he says. “Adoring fans and shit.” The pretty boys give a little cheer.

Brad shoves them aside, ignores their offended grunts, and kisses Ray without thinking, pressing his fingers into the small of Ray’s back and grunting when Ray bites him on the mouth.

“I can get that here, too,” Ray says as he pulls away. A couple of the pretty boys make kissing noises. One offers to suck Ray off.

“I’ll spoon you afterwards,” Brad says.

“But you’ll leave in the middle of the night.” It’s as close as they’ll come, Brad is certain, to talking about his running away like a fucking coward.

“I don’t repeat the same trick,” Brad says. “That would be boring ass shit.”

Ray looks at the pretty boys, laughing when one reaches out and touches his shirt, but looking back at Brad with a satisfied smile. “I’ve got another set,” he says. “Order me a decent goddamn beer.”

“Corona.”

“I said decent, you fuck.”

Brad orders him a Negra Modelo and has it sent to the stage as he takes his seat again. The second set isn’t as bad as the first, mostly because Ray sings most of the songs and because between the songs Ray keeps looking at him with a smirk that Brad wants to fuck off his face.

“You know, most assholes don’t have the balls to make a move on a guy they stopped talking to for two yeras after running scared from the best fuck they ever had,” Ray says when he slides into the seat across from Brad after the end of his show.

“DADT’s been repealed,” Brad replies as he watches Ray drink the beer he’d signaled for as Ray had crossed the room.

“So you’re not a commitment-phobe doucheshit.”

“Not anymore.”

“That repeal has all kinds of advantages,” Ray says.

Brad watches him finish his beer, and then he leans across the table and kisses the fuck out of him. “How the fuck did you end up here?” he asks when he pulls back.

“Of all the shitty Mexican places in all of San Diego?” Ray asks.

“Something like that,” Brad says.

“Fuck if I know,” Ray replies. “My drummer booked this shit-stain.”

“Show some respect,” Brad says. “The nachos are cheap as shit, just like your mom.”

Ray grins at him. “Guess you’ll have to stick around and prove it, you scared shit-eater.”

“Guess so,” Brad agrees, and this time, Ray leans over and kisses him first.


End file.
